The Impact of Technological Learning on Generating and Managing Technical Change Through Mediating Role of Technological Capabilities: The Case of EOR in Iran

Technological learning (TL) is necessary for absorbing and assimilating tacit and disembodied knowledge of technologies. After going through learning process, latecomers should have the ability to change and improve technology to respond to the technologically changing environment. Therefore, they need to build and accumulate technological capabilities (TCs) for generating and managing technical changes. The present research, applying a novel approach, studied TL, TC, and technical change in a single model to investigate the relationship among these three concepts in exploration and production companies of developing countries. Using the structural equation modeling method, the impact of TL mechanisms on two main types of TC, and TCs’ effect on incremental and radical technical changes were studied in the case of enhanced oil recovery (EOR), as a knowledge-intensive industry, in Iran, as an oil-rich developing country. In this article, the nature of technologies and the technological level of firms have been considered more seriously. The results showed that in the context of the EOR industry, learning by doing/using has a significant impact on operational capability (OC) and not on innovative capability (IC), learning by training/hiring, and learning by interacting have a considerable impact on both types of TC, and learning by searching has a significant influence only on IC. OC only generates incremental change, but IC develops both incremental and radical changes.